


MIRA's Grasp

by NeonGhostCat



Series: Beyond MIRA [2]
Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Clever Protagonist, Deductions, Escape, Evil Corporations, F/M, Family, Family Reunions, Fandom Blind Friendly, Female Protagonist, Gen, On the Run, Parent-Child Relationship, Science Fiction, Secret Organizations, Secrets, Suspense, husband-wife relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29858916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeonGhostCat/pseuds/NeonGhostCat
Summary: Hana was relieved when she was able to gracefully retire from working for MIRA as a communications specialist. The only thing that would have been better was if her husband wasn't still working with them, but their child was young and the money was good, so one more tour with them was honestly just a savvy decision.At least until her husband missed their weekly call and a group calling themselves "M" contacted her to tell her not to believe whatever MIRA said about what happened to him. She'll need to risk trusting a secretive organization and her own skills to cross the galaxy to reunite with him... with a toddler in tow and a hunter on their trail.Updates Fridays.Does not require you to read the first story, but it will spoil some of the ending of the first if you read out of order. Plus knowing what happens in the first story will let you pick up on some of the stuff going on in the background. (Or at least let you make good guesses.) 😉[Not required reading for the series, but has some treats for those who do.]
Series: Beyond MIRA [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118828
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10





	1. The Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hana is given reasons to distrust MIRA. Not that she needed more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who don't read "kidfic" -- this story isn't really about Hana being a cool mom or Hawk being a cute kid (but those elements are certainly there). I hope you give it a try!
> 
> Re: The Gen and F/M tags -- this isn't really a story about Hana and Red's relationship, though you do get glimpses of it. Sorry to those who typically only read the "falling in love" part. (I do love falling-in-love stories, but this is more about Hana's quest to reunite with her husband.) The rest of the series are romances, so if this one isn't for you, I hope you come back for the next!

Hana had the feeling something was wrong when Red (her husband preferred going by ‘Red’ over his real name to the point that even his family called him ‘Red’) missed their regular weekly video call. 

It wasn’t unusual, exactly — the frequent storms on Polus could sometimes delay their call for a few days. There was really nothing that marked this particular incident as different from any other, it was only that this time when she looked at the clock and saw it was more than an hour past when he was supposed to call, she got a sense of disquiet.

Resolving to think no more on it, she stopped waiting by the phone and instead chased their toddler around the apartment for awhile to distract them both.

Though her husband wasn’t on schedule, her mother-in-law was. Like clockwork, a half hour after Hawk went down for his nap, her mother-in-law called to check in with her. Red’s mother was lovely and caring and once more invited her to bring Hawk and come stay with them until Red came home. As always, Hana gently declined, Red’s mother sighed, and they moved on to catching up on what happened since the last call. Since these calls happened two or three times a week, there were only a few new stories about Hawk to relay and laugh over together before the conversation ended on the expected encouragement for Hana to take care of herself and to say hello to Red for her.

For some reason, his mother had forgotten to ask what Red had been up to. Hana was careful not to mention he’d missed their regular call. His mother was a worry-wart and there was no need to have her fret over nothing. It wasn’t a big deal.

She made sure to tell herself it wasn’t.

ඞ。。。。。

When another three days had passed with no word from Red, Hana became truly worried. 

Multi-day storms weren’t that unusual on Polus and on top of that, she was perfectly aware how MIRA HQ was breathing down the crew’s necks about them being behind schedule, so it was very possible that he was genuinely too busy to find the time or energy to call and all was well. She told herself it was just an unfortunate overlap of circumstances and Red may come out the other side of this radio silence with the good news that they’d finally cleared the landing pad and would soon be able to make more regular calls.

But that reassuring idea evaporated the third day when she heard the soft clicks on the line when she picked up the phone.

Hana had been employed from ages 17 to 24 as a Communications specialist for MIRA. She’d worked her way up from a mere Yellow to the prestige designation of Lemon and was well on her way to Gold when she’d become pregnant. She knew _exactly_ what a wire tap sounded like because she’d been responsible for tapping hundreds of lines herself. Like any Comms specialist with two brain cells to rub together, she knew better than to let on that she could hear the clicks. Those people who thoughtlessly mentioned them didn’t last long as a specialist — they either got scooped up for “special duties” or they quietly retired from the company and were never heard from again.

The first time someone in her department had “retired”, she didn’t bat an eye. The second time, she’d thought something seemed strange considering the person hadn’t been with the company long and loved the job. It was the third time on seeing the frightened look her co-worker had given her while clearing out his desk when she understood they weren’t leaving for their own reasons. It still took her a few years for her eyes to fully open to the shady side of MIRA’s operations, but it was enough to teach her to tread lightly. In her line of work, it was difficult to simply stop working for MIRA without MIRA taking offense to it.

Since Hana still had more than two brain cells to rub together, she pretended she didn’t notice the clicks this time either and made her call, but the back of her mind was racing, trying to piece together what was going on.

Red wouldn’t willingly get involved in anything shady. 

There was good money to be made by doing so and it was easy as long as MIRA didn’t suspect you of anything, but Hana’s entire job had been in assisting in nailing spies, thieves, and saboteurs. She still held a particular distaste for them even though she had no actual loyalty to MIRA itself, so she’d sought out a man as honest as she was. It was what lead to them agreeing to Red doing a more demanding tour. A six month contract at Polus would pay well enough that after the tour ended, Red could take a lower-paying position at a local MIRA facility or even seek out a job outside of MIRA and Hana could stay at home until Hawk was old enough to go to school. They were both willing to work harder and do so honestly.

So the idea that Red was doing anything bad at all was something she refused to consider for a moment. It was possible he was merely a suspect, but for them to begin tapping their phone now, something in particular must have happened to trigger the interest. 

Honestly, as much of a pain in the neck it would be she hoped that he _was_ a suspect of doing something because that was better than the alternative: damage control. Hana hadn’t dealt with many of those incidents, but she was aware that MIRA wanted to know when people were thinking of talking to lawyers and, if at all possible, what they said to these lawyers. And if MIRA was worried about lawyers, she was worried about her husband.

Hana sat Hawk down with a bin of soft blocks and pulled out her contacts book. For sensitive information like this, Hana preferred to go analog. She knew just how possible it was for people to dig through your business if it were digital. It was a chore to update every time someone switched sectors or services, but she didn’t have to worry about MIRA or any other shady group watching her dig through it in real time. Red had always teased her about her paranoia, but it was one less thing for her to stress over right now.

After an hour she had to admit that she was at something of a loss.

No one in her contacts that had the sort of access to find out what was going on would be safe enough for her to risk actually contacting about it. There were plenty in her contacts who were good, honest people and would be willing to help her, but they were careless or were watched very carefully due to their sensitive positions.

Her options at that point would be to either sit and wait and hope whatever was going on cleared up on its own or take a risk to contact one of them anyway and perhaps subject both her family and theirs to MIRA’s own special brand of “Noise Reduction”. Which is to say, intimidation techniques that started out soft and grew progressively more unpleasant the more you resisted backing down and bending to their will.

As much as it rankled, she chose the first option. For now.

ඞ。。。。。

The flowers arrived the next day. The sight of them made her blood run cold.

Woodenly, she accepted the bouquet from the delivery girl and shut the door. After setting the flowers aside, she retreated to the couch with her son in her lap and the note that had been nested in the flowers clutched in her trembling hand. It took Hawk pawing at her face to get her attention to begin moving again — her eyes had still been staring at the bouquet across the room. Once her son was occupied in chasing digital fish around a tablet screen, she opened the note.  
  


> Your husband was very particular about the flowers, so we figure they must mean something to you two. Hopefully it’ll back up what this note says. Whatever you hear from MIRA in the next few days about your husband, we’re expecting it’ll all be lies. We rescued him and he’s alive. They’ll probably try to say otherwise or even that he’d been up to no good. We’ve worked with MIRA before and know how ruthless they can be. He says you know that better than anyone. We know how strange this letter may seem and there’s no real reason to trust we’re any safer than MIRA, but you can see what you think before you choose what to do. They’re probably still getting their story straight right now. But they’ll be contacting you soon. If you decide you want to hear us out, use the number below at a phone-terminal they’re unlikely to have already tapped. Be safe.
> 
> \- M

She drew a steadying breath and looked again at the flowers, carefully folding the note to rest it in her lap. 

Hana hated flowers. Well, “hated” is a strong word, but since her name meant “flower” everyone seemed to feel she was obligated to love them and being the stubborn mule she was, she rejected it with all her might. Red had learned early in their relationship not to send her any and was one of the few people who had taken it in stride rather than as a rejection. It was one of the things that made her fall for him.

When she found out she was pregnant and decided to use that as an excuse to quit MIRA rather than go on maternity leave, two of her superiors had commented about how “strange and abrupt” her decision was. This prompted her distrust of MIRA to grow to low-key paranoia, probably not helped by the pregnancy hormones. Convinced that any communications the two of them had for as long as Red worked for MIRA were going to be compromised, they agreed to a simple flower code. Or, rather, she came up with it and Red in his infinite patience went along with it. It had felt ridiculous even at the time and when she’d calmed down, they’d laughed about it. They’d even joked about it when Red was prepping to go on this tour — “Don’t forget the flower code.” “How could I?”

The bouquet was a bunch of yellow flowers with a single red flower. It meant something along the lines of, “I’m safe.” He was the single red flower being surrounded by yellow, the color that represented her. She might have doubted the note if it had come any other way.

She went and checked the bundle of flowers looking for any other potential clue, but found nothing but incredibly common flowers and plain waxed paper to wrap them. Hana took the red flower and set it aside before coaching Hawk into holding the bouquet. Together, they made their way out of their apartment to deliver the yellow flowers to a neighbor to thank her for the snacks she’d sent over the other day.

The whole time Hana chatted with their neighbor and let Hawk be fawned over by the older woman, the gears in Hana’s mind were turning.

She was pretty sure that it wasn’t MIRA’s style to try to set her up this way by pretending to be a third party group. And Red was a lot more obstinate than you’d expect from his easy-going attitude — he’d never have mentioned the flower code to anyone for any reason. So chances were, someone really had rescued Red from some sort of incident at Polus. As worrisome as that idea was, she at least knew her husband was alive and well enough to request the flowers. She hoped the fact that he didn’t send his own message was due to whoever “M” was worrying he might inadvertently say too much and not because he was too injured to write.

By the time she and Hawk returned to their own apartment, Hana resolved to wait until MIRA contacted her before calling the number. She had to know what MIRA’s opening move was.


	2. The Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MIRA finally gets its story straight.

The call from MIRA finally came in two days later.

A crisp and detached woman’s voice came over the line, confirming Hana’s identity and relationship to Red. She was requested to “report” to the local MIRA office and asked when her earliest convenience was. After Hana bluntly stated she had a toddler to mind and no time was convenient, the woman on the other end asked if she had family or a trusted family friend available.

“No. Our family doesn’t live in this sector and our family friends are all currently on MIRA tours. What’s this all about?” She tried not to sound snappish, but her genuine edginess was bleeding through even though she’d had some time to think about what might be going on.

The woman on the other end of the line hesitated before asking Hana if it were an acceptable time for a conversation that might take awhile and perhaps be distressing. The woman reeked of being attached to Public Relations, probably newer to the job even though her calm and precise tone was impeccable. The most telling aspect that something was fishy was that the woman did not request a video call, which was clearly a way to make this discussion more detached.

Hana narrowed her eyes on the other end of the line. So far everything seemed to confirm what the mysterious note said would happen.

“How distressing?” she asked, her voice tight.

The woman paused for an uncomfortable moment before cautiously saying, “There has… been an accident at Polus 339.”

Hana took a breath, letting the woman hear it. She didn’t have to feign the unstable emotions that colored her voice. “An accident? Is my husband all right?”

After a carefully timed moment, the woman softened her voice and proceeded with the ruthlessness of pulling off an adhesive bandage. “We regret to inform you that the seismic stabilizers at Polus 339 failed, possibly during a blizzard. No survivors have been located after a thorough search. MIRA would like to offer its deepest condolences and extend reassurances that after an investigation has properly concluded and determined that there is no fault, the appropriate restitutions as specified in your spouse’s contract will be transferred to the account attached to your spouse’s paycheck. We expect the investigation to take approximately one month and the payment to therefore be processed within fourteen business days of that. A grief councilor in your area is, of course, available for you and will be paid for in full for the first six months of your mourning period, regardless of found fault. You are also eligible for widow and widower’s benefits immediately at any MIRA Inc. Business, guaranteeing a 15% discount on any purchases. If you have any questions, I can relay you to the AIO line. Shall I direct your call?”

The woman’s voice may have been soft, but she barely took a breath throughout her long, almost clinical speech. There was no room for Hana to interrupt and, frankly, she couldn’t have even if she could think of anything to say. The speech was clearly designed to be brutal and overwhelming — to strip Hana of everything resembling stability and leave her stunned and helpless. Even as half-prepared as she was for it, Hana was trembling, her heart racing.

“Are you still connected?” the woman asked after a long pause. There was a faint crackle on the line that told Hana that whoever was monitoring the call had probably enhanced the volume without minding the dampeners. They must not have thought much about her skill, which she was currently less angered by than she might have been otherwise. It reminded her she was being monitored.

“My husband… is dead?” she asked shakily, wanting to hear them say it directly.

A pause.

“There has been no body recovery, but I am authorized to confirm that the chances of the survival of any of the crew of Polus 339 is determined to be zero percent. Condolences on your loss.” If anything, the woman’s tone was even more detached than before.

“W-what do I do?” Hana asked, moving a hand over her own heart to contain the bubble of genuine anxiety. If she didn’t have that message from “M” to hold onto, she would probably have been broken by this, clicks and crackles or no.

“Please hold. I will transfer you to an available line at the AIO. Thank you for your time.”

“Wait —” Hana protested, her voice breaking with a combination of anger and dismay. 

The AIO was short for Artificial Intelligence Operators — an AI system specifically built to handle customers. They could look up information in nanoseconds, reducing friction for the customer, were almost incapable of making mistakes, and were incredibly polite under all circumstances. You could not hurt this AI’s feelings, play on its sympathies, frighten it, intimidate it, or even truly negotiate with it. Whatever the company’s policies were, it would follow them to the letter. 

In short, Red’s apparent death was being treated as just as important to MIRA as returns on a flat of expired soft drinks.

Trying to dampen the rage that flared up in her and bury it under her genuine distress, Hana only stayed on the line with the AIO long enough to verify whether or not MIRA was going to contact Red’s family or if she’d have to break the news herself. The AIO almost reluctantly informed her that a meeting with them was scheduled in roughly an hour and then tried to sell her on some sort of widows and widowers health insurance plan. 

Hana hung up on it before it got more than a few words out. 

She went to her son’s safety bed, scooped him up, and curled up in her bed with him, holding the drowsy child while she cried softly. Hana had now placed all of her faith in “M”’s note being true, but MIRA’s shock and awe campaign had worked pretty much as intended and she needed a little time to recover from it.

ඞ。。。。。

The next two days were rough.

Red’s family was devastated, of course. Her mother-in-law begged her to come to stay with them, “for awhile — indefinitely — please”. Hana told her she wasn’t fit to travel yet, but she’d think on it. She just needed a few days to sort out her head. Her mother-in-law said she understood and then handed off the phone to her husband, too overcome to continue the conversation.

The whole time, Hana heard the little clicks and crackles that told her MIRA was still tapping the line; gauging their emotional states; listening for any signs they knew more than they’d been told or were thinking of mounting a legal action. Hana let herself mourn for Red as if she believed it were a sure thing and tried to subtly keep her in-laws from even considering doing anything beyond gathering together to console each other.

When she thought it was safe to do anything except stay at home taking care of Hawk and some of the emotionally draining but necessary things you did when someone has died, Hana dressed herself and her son in street clothes and went shopping at a local shopping center, picking up a pay-as-you-go phone. While her son played in the ball pit of one of the eateries, Hana sat on a bench to watch him and took out the folded note to tap in the number “M” had given her.

It didn’t take long before the call connected.

The gravelly voice of an older man greeted her cautiously and said nothing further, obviously waiting for some sign of who the caller was.

“I’d like to speak to my husband,” Hana said flatly, her voice quiet as she watched Hawk gleefully throw the pit’s germ-proof balls at the slide and crowed his pleasure when the slide threw them back at him.

“Ma’am?” the gravelly voice asked. His tone wasn’t the least bit confused — rather, he seemed suddenly alert.

“Red.”

There was a pause before the man asked, “Is this line secure?”

“I bought a burner phone. I’m sitting in the back of the play area of a shopping center we don’t usually go to, facing the entry point. Unless they’ve decided to go to insane lengths, I’m sure it’s safe. Please let me speak to my husband.”

There was a soft sigh, perhaps regretful. “He’s asleep at the moment. The medics have him on a lot of medicines right now.”

She paused a moment before bluntly asking, “Is that true?”

He seemed surprised, but answered without hesitation. “Yes ma’am. Just bad timing, I promise. He’s only really awake a few hours a day, though it’s meant to get better as he recovers.”

To her relief, she believed him. Hana was very good at picking up on lies, especially to direct questions. “Can’t be helped, then. You were saying? About the medicines?”

This time he did hesitate.

“It’s all right. Tell me,” Hana insisted quietly, listening hard to what she could pick up over the line. A soft rumbling of engines, the creak of a chair, the thick sound of well-worn leather shifting, the distant groans of metal, and the steady hum of fans. It sounded as if the gravel-voiced man was probably in a spacecraft of some type. Something heavy and maybe an older model.

“He was injured in an attack, ma’am. I don’t know rightly how to tell you this… I don’t ‘spose there’s a good way, is there? But there was an Impostor at Polus. We got your Red out of there. He’ll live. We’re taking good care of him, okay? It’s not like we’re holdin’ him for ransom or anything, if you’re worried about anything like that. But… we don’t think it’s safe to let MIRA know. Somethin’ just didn’t feel right about it.” She thought there was a slight deception there, but wasn’t ready to call him on it. The man continued. “He said you know MIRA.”

“I do. I… Did anyone else make it? Black? White?” She knew two of her husband’s friends from previous tours had been paired with him again in this one. She liked them.

The man on the other end of the line paused. “It’s probably for the best to just say Red made it out, all right?” He said it very gently. “The less MIRA has a chance to learn, the better, right? In case you change your mind about telling ‘em what you know.”

“I won’t. If you can prove to me my husband is safe and alive…” She took a slow breath. “Are you ‘M’?”

The man chuckled softly. “We’re all ‘M’ here. You’ll see what I mean later. You can call me Cap’n.”

“Ah,” she replied, listening intently to the background noise in the silence he politely allowed her before speaking again. “Then you may call me ‘Hana’, if you like.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Captain?”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Is ‘M’ a Ferrous-Class a32-20 or an Umber Raumschiff 8800?” 

She took a risk on guessing. If she was wrong, she was sure she’d still learn something from it, but it would be better if she guessed right. The biggest part of it was assuming “M” referred to a ship, but it was strangely the part of her logic leap she felt most confident about. The choices in spacecraft types she named were based entirely on how far out Polus was from everything else and what sort of ships might reasonably be unremarkable traffic in that part of the sector. The two she named were older models that suited the wear and tear she thought she heard in the engines. She actually couldn’t tell the difference between spacecraft by sound alone — not over this connection, at least — but that wasn’t really the point.

There was an almost electric pause on the other end of the line before the Captain responded, his voice dropped to something of a more respectful level than before. “…on the grounds it might not be safe to say, I won’t. But… you’re damn sharp, aren’t you?”

“I was very good at my job, Captain. Better than MIRA knows.”

“That’s good. You need to stay sharp, ma’am. If you want, you can stay where you are or go to your husband’s family — he said his mother might be tryin’ to get you to come.”

There was a silent third option there, so she reached for it. “Or?”

“Or you can come here.”

“I’ll come.”

“It’s a long way, ma’am. It might be awhile before you could go back. Medical says Red’s going to take at least a year to recover.”

“I understand. That’s not an issue. Who are you? Not common cargo freighters, are you? Not transport either. You couldn’t deviate from your route for a rescue without it being noticed. Activists? Government?” She didn’t let her tone get accusatory. She didn’t feel especially on-guard against “M” anymore. There was something about the Captain’s voice that seemed honest and real. Well, he wasn’t 'honest' in the sense of being too good to lie, but rather, she didn’t feel any ill-intentions behind it — just a wariness that came from needing to protect people.

There was a puff of air that seemed to be a surprised and impressed laugh. “You know I won’t answer that yet, ma’am. But we’re not anyone you need worry about. So just think of us as some friendly freighters who happened to be in the area.”

“Very well, Captain. Is it safe to bring our son?”

“He’d be safe with us if you want to bring him. But MIRA… will probably be very interested in keeping an eye on you. Maybe even try to prevent you from seein’ each other to lure Red out. If we just send someone to pick the two of you up direct, it could get hairy. It might be safer to let them forget about you first.”

“I see.” She thought about it for awhile, listening to the engines on the other end and the subtle sounds of people shifting their weight. She thought there were at least two other people in the room listening in with the Captain. They were very quiet. Professionals of some sort. Probably government. She decided not to call them on that, having already shown that she was worth taking seriously. And the Captain had already said he wouldn’t confirm her guesses regardless. It didn’t matter who they were, really. Her husband was with them and she believed that for now he was safe in their care. That was enough. “I think to start it may be best to take my mother-in-law up on her offer to take us in for awhile. I can leave in a week. What do you advise?”

The two of them made plans together for nearly a half hour until Hawk lost interest in the ball pit and playground equipment and demanded her attention. She wasn’t to make contact with “M” again until she arrived at her in-laws home unless MIRA did something that interrupted their plans. They promised to try to get her a safe way to video call with her husband before she left.

Hana packed away the burner phone and took Hawk home. Halfway there, she felt a prickle on the back of her neck that told her someone was following them. She hadn’t found a way to verify it without alerting the person she was aware by the time she got them safely home, but it was enough to make her even more cautious.

Just how far, exactly, was MIRA going to take this?


End file.
